I just beat Halls of Steel using a Mystera worshiping paladin gnome, I can confirm how great this build is. I ended up with so much mana I could kill him once using halpmeh then had enough for 4 fireballs (4 more deaths). After using all my mana potions I used refreshment, and because I allways ended with 100 Piety after a beat down on the indomitable, I could allways refresh untill the cost would reach over 100. He was under 25 deaths left before i even needed refreshment thanks to being a gnome and good timing .

Last edited by Xanopticon on Mon Aug 08, 2011 4:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is pretty broken. I beat the indomitable with a gnome paladin on my 2nd trip into this area. However, is there even any other way to beat him? I'm thinking maybe a sorcerer worshipping tiki tooki could get first strike + reflex potion and knock off 3 death protections per hit but how would you survive for the ~20 hits it would take without Taurog?

OP here, great reading these responses so I can improve on this. I didn't know that all pissing Mysteria off would do is raise magic resistance so Gnome is definitely the best class for this then.

Xanopticon, I tried Halls of Steel with this but I kind of sucked because everything permanently weakens you or takes down your physical res, how did you manage to level up without getting weakened/hurting your res too much?

TigerKnee, Mana burners aren't really a problem, you just avoid them or kill them on level up, if the boss is a mana burner just fireball until you have no mana then kill him with your sword, using mana pots if you need to heal. I beat the mana burning boss in the frozen tundra pretty easily. Being level 10 helped a lot too.

Ok scratch that last post I finally beat indomitable, he had max magic resist so I didn't even bother with fireball, I'd just attack/heal until I got 100 piety I'd just spam magic boon unil I could barely afford refreshment then cast refresh, heal up, rince+repeat. By the time he finally died my mana pool was like 87 or something ridiculous.

I think Halfling monk worshipping Taurog can do it BUT that depends on luck that you don't get too many illusions and resist-lowering golems (most other classes won't care about those golems. Monk does)

Ok after some more testing I've concluded that the heal spam + magic boon + refreshment is completely broken. You can just sit there spamming heal and and getting piety and taking magic boon, when you're almost out of mana you can take refreshment and then just repeat, the increased mana pool balances out the constantly increasing cost of refreshment and you can probably get an infinite mana pool by constantly cycling this tactic, I found a 150 mana pool was easily enough to beat Namtar, Indomitable and Avatar though so I never bothered seeing how high I could push it.

Didn't think about it but wargizmo is right, I only bothered to get my mana up to 45 but once it's high enough you could just do that loop he says and everything becomes easy mode. The hardest part is finding mystera early, but once you do you don't even need to kill anything untill you have enough mana to outheal stuff 2-3 levels above you, if you can take a hit, you can kill it.

Wargizmo wrote:Ok after some more testing I've concluded that the heal spam + magic boon + refreshment is completely broken. You can just sit there spamming heal and and getting piety and taking magic boon, when you're almost out of mana you can take refreshment and then just repeat, the increased mana pool balances out the constantly increasing cost of refreshment and you can probably get an infinite mana pool by constantly cycling this tactic, I found a 150 mana pool was easily enough to beat Namtar, Indomitable and Avatar though so I never bothered seeing how high I could push it.

Won't the cost of refreshment eventually go over 100 and become impossible to get?

I think the first step in fixing this is to disable HALPMEH from casting when you don't need it, i.e., when your HP is full and you're not poisoned. I beat Indomitable using a Gnome Wizard casting BICEPS and GETINDARE, which worked but wasn't a cakewalk since those two glyphs can't be recast until they wear off (upon attacking, and thus receiving damage, and thus needing to regenerate and to let the monster regenerate if you're trying to avoid leveling up).

The second issue I see is that Gnomes are overpowered. Relative to the other mana-heavy race, Elves, they are nearly double as effective as they were in the alpha (Elves get less of a boost, Gnomes get more). Mana potions are incredibly valuable, and Gnomes also don't have to worry about conversion until the last minute since they get the full benefit whether they convert right away or wait until the boss (most other races see an immediate benefit to conversion, so waiting longer than necessary to convert means you are wasting resources). I would suggest raising Gnomes back to the full 100 points for a conversion bonus, maybe even increasing it to 110. (I think Halflings are probably fine at 80, at least for now, symmetry be damned.)

Regarding Mysteria herself, I'm not sure that she'd be all that unbalanced if HALPMEH could no longer be spammed. However, it will still be easy enough to get very high max MP and then have her remove all the magic resist that she gave as the side effect to the boon, and still way too easy to ignore the magic resist altogether if you're not relying on fireballs, which is much easier than in the alpha now that Mysteria no longer hates physical attacks. Maybe her Magic boon should give monsters physical resistance? 1% to magic and 1% to phys, but she'll only ever remove the magic resist seems both fair and fitting to her personality.

q 3 wrote:I think the first step in fixing this is to disable HALPMEH from casting when you don't need it, i.e., when your HP is full and you're not poisoned. I beat Indomitable using a Gnome Wizard casting BICEPS and GETINDARE, which worked but wasn't a cakewalk since those two glyphs can't be recast until they wear off (upon attacking, and thus receiving damage, and thus needing to regenerate and to let the monster regenerate if you're trying to avoid leveling up).

The second issue I see is that Gnomes are overpowered. Relative to the other mana-heavy race, Elves, they are nearly double as effective as they were in the alpha (Elves get less of a boost, Gnomes get more). Mana potions are incredibly valuable, and Gnomes also don't have to worry about conversion until the last minute since they get the full benefit whether they convert right away or wait until the boss (most other races see an immediate benefit to conversion, so waiting longer than necessary to convert means you are wasting resources). I would suggest raising Gnomes back to the full 100 points for a conversion bonus, maybe even increasing it to 110. (I think Halflings are probably fine at 80, at least for now, symmetry be damned.)

Regarding Mysteria herself, I'm not sure that she'd be all that unbalanced if HALPMEH could no longer be spammed. However, it will still be easy enough to get very high max MP and then have her remove all the magic resist that she gave as the side effect to the boon, and still way too easy to ignore the magic resist altogether if you're not relying on fireballs, which is much easier than in the alpha now that Mysteria no longer hates physical attacks. Maybe her Magic boon should give monsters physical resistance? 1% to magic and 1% to phys, but she'll only ever remove the magic resist seems both fair and fitting to her personality.

HALPMEH is now disabled when the player doesn't need it in the newest patch. Also, Mystera gives less piety for casting now. Technically LEMMISI can still be spammed to gain piety for Mystera since LEMMISI isn't disabled when the map is fully revealed. I've used LEMMISI with Mystera to beat the Indomitable previously. But the Mystera's mana boon spamming tactic won't be effective at all anymore because of the reduced piety gaining.